Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Fine dining restaurant are no longer a luxury. They’ve rather become an experience that everyone must have had more than once in their regular course of dining. While the list of fine dining restaurants keeps growing longer by the day, not all these restaurants can keep up to their repute of fine dining category.

Bindiya Chotrani experiences fine dining at mainland China and tells us if this one keeps up to its repute of the same.

IMG_0555An uptight restaurant that it is, the decor or ambiance isn’t atypical enough, for us to talk about. Only that it is classy, elegant and most obviously has a different class of people that talk in hushed voices and ask their kids to behave.

We settled down on our tables, hungry and wanting to call for food. The menus were placed onto our table and we soon began with the first course – one portion of the chicken hot, and sour soup, aromatic chicken with garlic, drums of heaven, veg spring rolls and stir-fried ginger mushrooms chilli. We were surprised on learning that the restaurant did not serve the chicken Manchow soup.

The chicken hot and sour soup was heavenly, not runny like at the other restaurants. Perfectly IMG_0531 viscous and with the right hit of sauces, the soup had a generous helping of chicken chunks in it. The aromatic chicken with garlic, Shahdong style – this was rectangular cubes of chicken coated with crispy flakes of dough that had been flavoured with garlic. Just about passable, the appetizer very evidently tasted of underdone dough. The drums of heaven – nothing but Chicken Lollipop – weren’t what we’d expected them to taste like. Coated with sauces, this was mildly sweet and not typically pungent.

Drums of heaven that tasted like this, absence of the Chicken manchow soup on the menu considering this particular soup isn’t an actual Chinese appetizer made us wonder if this place was trying to emulate an authentic fine dining Chinese eatery.

We called for sodas to wash down our food, that took what seemed like ages to be served.

IMG_0533Not very impressed with the food and the horrendously slow service here, we plunged into the main course nevertheless. Our pick from the mains were Seasonal Vegetables in Mahlak Sauce, Egg Fried Rice and a shredded chicken with green and red pepper. While the egg fried rice was just perfect – long non-sticky grains of rice done well, the Seasonal Vegetables in Mahlak sauce tasted as enticing as it looked visually. Diced vegetables – mushrooms, bell peppers, baby corn, Bok Choy, broccoli – done in a demi-glace were-perfectly-handed on the spices, so much so that even a meat-lover would scarf this one down willingly. As for the Shredded chicken – this was chicken and bell peppers tossed in a brown sauce, had no particular taste but paired perfectly with the egg-fried rice.

We’d visit this place for a second time only if they improve their stupefyingly slow service. As for the taste of food, we’d only recommend customising it to the taste-buds of a typical Indian. Yet again, there is no dearth of Indians who’d rather have a mildly sweet chicken lollipop then the typically piquant one.